Surnow’s Revenge?

Did anyone notice the name of the senator grilling Jack Bauer in tonight’s season seven premier of “24?” Surely it is no coincidence that the senator’s name, Blaine Mayer, bore more than a passing resemblance to that of Jane Meyer, who wrote an unsympathetic article about “24″ co-creator Joel Surnow for The New Yorker in February, 2007.

In that article, Meyer calls out the program and Surnow for blind patriotism and for legitimizing torture as a means to an end. In tonight’s show, Senator Mayer judges Jack Bauer similarly harshly. Though not before Jack has time to call the senator “smug” and leave the Capitol to save America from the terrorists once again–using any means necessary, we suspect.

Surnow and the rest of the crew were still unhappy about the article when my editors and I visited them in the summer of 2007, while we were working on Secrets of 24. It seems they felt strongly enough to have a little dig at Meyer in the opening of season seven. As for the show itself, I thought it was a promising start.

UPDATE: It seems Meyer was not amused. This from the Washington Post:

“It’s kind of flattering,” she says in an e-mail. “It’s also kind of amusing that the Tough Boys of Hollywood, who created Jack Bauer, are total cream puffs themselves, who can’t take criticism that their glamorization of torture is about as popular these days as Dick Cheney.”

(Hat tip: Dan)